DANCING OVER A VOLCANO.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 720, 20 September 1870, Page 4

DANCING OVER A VOLCANO.

One of tho richest gunmakers of New York recently gave a ball on the occasion of his daughter's marriage. The company were at the height of gaiety, dancing and singing, and tho host slipped away to the lower regions to see that all was in right order for the supper, which was to wind up the evening's amusement. In the passage leading to the kitchen he met one of the maidservants, a country girl recently hired, with a candle in her hand, which she was holding, country fashion, without the aid of a candlestick. Without troubling himself to inquire what her particular errand at that moment might be, the host passed on to the kitchen, where he found his wife in anxious consultation with the cook, and in a few minutes afterwards the new maid appeared carrying a number of bottles she had been sent to fetch from the cellar. At this moment it flashed across the host's memory that he had deposited three barrels of gunpowder in the cellar, and that the lid of one. had been taken off to show a customer the quality of the contents. He asked the serva.it in a trembling voice what she had done with candle ? " It's in the cellar, sir. Sure I stuck it in the cask of black sand forenent the door while I'd be taking out the wine." For a moment the wretched man felt paralysed, then he rushed to the cellar, and was horror-struck to see the naked candle stuck upright in the cask of powder, exactly under the room where all the young people were dancing. The wick wanted snuffing, and threatened every moment to fall. Half petrified with fsar, he gazed at the dreadful sight for a moment without having the power to move, then, recovering his presence of mind, for the candle, shaken by the vibrations of the floor overhead, seemed inclined to topple over, he cautiously but swiftly advanced, stretched out his hand and extricated the dreadful fuse from the shell, which in another minute might have bloivn him and his guests to atoms. Returning to the kitchen, he relieved his over wrought feelings by flinging the candle in the face of the careless Biddy, who had so nearly turned the house of joy into one of mourning, and then most ungallantly kicked her out of the front door into the street, till his wife thought he was fairly mad or drunk.